Your AWS Bill

🌟 What Your AWS Bill Can Tell You

Hi there,

Have you ever wondered what your AWS bill might be trying to tell you? I recently reviewed a company’s AWS bills from the last three months, and here's what they revealed:

• They saved 28.3% on costs after implementing some optimizations like a Compute Savings Plan and Reserved Instances. Great start!

• But the Savings Plan didn’t cover everything, meaning some resources were still charged at the higher, on-demand rate.

• Costs for storage and networking remained constant but could be trimmed down further.

• A hidden surprise? Some costs were creeping up and might increase by 20% next year due to growing traffic. Time for a closer look!

With some additional fine-tuning, they could save another 8%. For deeper insights, the next step is simple: provide read-only access to analyze their AWS account. Who doesn’t want to save more?

📈 Celebrate Progress with AWS Cost Explorer

Seeing costs trend downward while business needs grow is a win! A recent client of mine saw this in action, and it was a moment to celebrate. Their cloud cost efficiency improved alongside their expansion. A true partnership in success!

📘 A Big Update to AWS Best Practices

AWS recently refreshed its Well-Architected Framework with updates across key areas like reliability, security, and sustainability. It’s worth asking:

• How well does your AWS setup align with these updated practices?

• Where might tweaks bring you closer to the latest standards?

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but continual learning, fine-tuning, and cleanup can yield significant benefits. Keep up the great work—your cloud journey is evolving beautifully!

Link: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/framework/welcome.html 

🛡️ AWS WAF: Your Application’s Glass Shield

Think of AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) as an unbreakable glass protecting your app from real threats. Here’s a reason to smile: AWS announced that starting October 2024, any requests blocked by WAF on CloudFront won’t incur fees. Less cost for safer apps!

💡 Quick Tip: AWS CLI Cheatsheet

I'm always impressed by how large documentation sites are kept up-to-date.

For example, the AWS CLI has 397 command parameters: https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/reference/index.html 

This type of content does not change so frequently, but still.

Here is a short cheatsheet about how to interact with S3 using AWS CLI: https://community.aws/content/2msW7Ffneji3AtDZre1fvwY7x3b/aws-cli-cheatsheet-interacting-with-amazon-s3

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Have questions or found something especially helpful? Just hit reply, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

See you next week,
David